ERNEST HEMINGWAY: Writer, war correspondent, international adventurer, lover, drinker, brawler. The tabloid reputation — filled with truths, half-truths and flat-out untruths — grows ever wider. If you made up a character like Ernest Hemingway, how many would believe it? The mercurial Hemingway left people enchanted, hostile, endeared, confused, charmed, bruised, engaged, bitter. He was an extraordinary, unforgettable presence. As more than one person remarked: “Hemingway sucked the air out of a room.”

Though Hemingway’s extraordinary life and career has been exhaustively covered, less thoroughly examined has been his fascinating friendship with another American legend, film icon Gary Cooper.

On paper, it might seem impossible that the 20th century’s best-known writer and the tight-lipped, all-American “common man” would develop such a close friendship. The cowboy and the suburbanite. The conservative and the liberal. Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper were complete opposites and yet the best of friends for over 20 years, right up to their deaths a mere seven weeks apart in 1961.

Narrated by Academy Award nominee Sam Waterston (Law & Order, The Killing Fields), COOPER AND HEMINGWAY: THE TRUE GEN offers an unprecedented look at the bond between two of the most iconic artists of the 20th century. Featuring interviews with legendary actors, historians and members of the Hemingway family, including:

KIRK DOUGLAS (Spartacus, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). One of the American Film Institute’s Greatest Screen Legends in American History

Cooper and Hemingway: The True Gen – NY Times Critic’s Pick – A feature documentary on the 20 year friendship of Ernest Hemingway and Gary Cooper. Narrated by Sam Waterston, Voice of Hemingway by Len Cariou, Written & Directed by John Mulholland, Produced by Richard ZampellaNY Times Critics’ Pick

Geoff Moult – huge Gary Cooper fan and tireless supporter of True Gen – has died. Geoff passed away on April 10. I’m a lucky man, indeed, to have met Geoff Moult. A remarkably gracious and caring human being. Next to me at this moment is a book given to me by Geoff and Maggie on their fellow Welshman, Dylan Thomas. Which brings back delicious memories of an afternoon in NYC, when Geoff and Maggie and I hit various bars in which Dylan Thomas once hung out. Some people, you meet them once and they are a part of you forever. It was that way with Geoff. The man is already missed, deeply so. All my deepest sympathy to Maggie and his daughter.